Thursday, February 2, 2012

“Big Bad John” and “Big Bad Bruce”…ah, Those Homophobic 60’s

Fans of oldies but goodies radio will likely remember the
huge #1 hit Jimmy Dean had with “Big Bad John,” in 1961. Such a song was ripe
for parody and those that did went directly for the opposite of the big
super-butch John. They came up, mostly in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, with over
a dozen stereotypical and homophobic parodies, and the most popular name in the
title was Bruce.

Below, Jimmy Dean's original hit

On This Pageof my website I’ve collected all I could
find, and you can hear clips of them all. And I was quite pleased a couple of
years ago when Randy Sparks, of the New Christy Minstrels, emailed me that he
wrote the first “Big Bruce” parody, but it was quickly stolen. He shares the
whole story on my webpage.

Steve Greenberg had the most successful parody, with his
45 rpm record making the Billboard charts at #97, in 1969. It’s a well-known
parody and I think it got a lot more radio play than the chart position
indicates. Someone put the song on Youtube so I can share that with you here.

I found the lyrics online (below) and trivia nuts might
be interested to know that Greenberg recorded it twice and in the other one Bruce,
instead of coming from New Orleans, came “from Abilene, where he had a social
group called the Lone Star Queens.” It’s curious Greenberg would make that
change.

And another video is also on Youtube, by country
artist/comedian Ben Colder, and his version was of "Big Sweet John."

Ignoring the current age of Youtube video parodies, I think this song holds the record for most gay parody recordings actually commercially released.